in my life

“you’re smiling. is that because you’ve had a few glasses of wine? or because you’re being nostalgic and indulgent?” my mom inquired as i sat reading the st. olaf magazine on the couch after dinner. it was a moment when i didn’t realize i was smiling at all. i was proud of chloe, one of “my” first-year students in kildahl, who attended the u.n. commission on sustainable development. and happy for one of my favorite professors, charles taliaferro, for publishing a book on, above all, love. re-living late-night conversations with chloe over chips and salsa, bouncing a ball against my fridge in my junior counselor dorm room. and long-winded, seemingly crazy classes with charles, clothes covered in chalk, hair standing on end from his sweaty hands, with his dog, tiepelo, at his feet. class culminates with an invitation for all of us to his office to discuss theology while listening to the love actually soundtrack with a backdrop of christmas lights. how can a place elicit such unintentional bliss?

this post it both nostalgic and indulgent. since we graduated a year ago this week, olaf and moving on, etc. have been on my mind. these are some of my favorite pictures from senior week, graduation day and the weekend at my cabin. there’s this part of garden state that always grabs me,

“you'll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day one day and it's just gone. and you can never get it back. it's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. i mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. you won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for you kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. i miss the idea of it. maybe that's all family really is. a group of people who miss the same imaginary place.” (LARGEMAN, GARDEN STATE)

i haven’t been wandering the world without a sense of love-home-family-place. but i know that there’s something that some of us left in our imaginary places. or some part of ourselves that we have given to each other to keep safe. the moments when the phone rings before 8 am, signaling only an international call, and i leap out of bed to interrupt the recorder and the subsequent pure elation of hearing the voice on the other end. finishing each other’s sentences or verbalizing muddled emotions. reliving moments, days, years and laughing, crying, or both, with the same intensity. inadvertently smiling while reading a college quarterly. you know. the moments when nostalgic love breeds gratitude for the things we carry, or let each other carry for us, from the past.

“there are places i remember
all my life
though some have changed
some forever, not for better
some have gone… and some remain
all these places have their moments
of lovers and friends
i still can recall
some are dead and some are living
in my life i’ve loved them all.”
(THE BEATLES)

there's nowhere you can be that isn't where you were meant to be (it's easy)

one extremely late night during my first year of college, powered by caffeine, i hallucinated what i thought was an epiphany. the beatles weren’t saying “love, love, love” at the beginning of “all you need is love.” i decided they were crooning “blah, blah, blah.” i focused on specific verses as i pushed repeat over and over again to clarify my point. “there’s nothing you can do that can’t be done” signaled the tediousness of life, etc. in the morning at breakfast in the caf, i shared my “finding.” “what are you saying? that’s crazy.” “all you need is ‘blah’ ? yes, i am sure that’s what the beatles were saying.” i laughed at my friends’ challenges, but mentally stood by the blah proposal.

since i’ve had typhoid, a lot of my days could be summed up with blah, blah, blahs or yada, yada, yadas. usually you summarize accomplishments at the end of the day. if you’re in an interesting place, you talk about the things you’ve seen. but when you’re sleeping like a slothful cat, and everything is an exhausting task, less stands out.

in the last two weeks i have gone to colorado and new york to visit two of my favorite people in the universe. usually when you go on vacation, you aim to see something. the blah, blah, blah of typhoid has granted me one raison d’etre—getting better. and, tired of sleeping, i decided to do it with love. sappy mcsapstra. whatever.

at first i was frustrated when i was too tired to go for a long hike in the mountains, go for a long run or walk around new york for the day. but then i realized how liberating it is to operate without objectives. that i could spend a whole day in new york, without defining my time by broadway shows or museums, but rather filling it with sleep, the greatest bagels in the world, and wonderful post-teaching evenings with diana. there aren't many days without some objective. writing a lesson plan. going grocery shopping. developing film. running. something. my only intention in the last few weeks has been to be objective-free. the thing about not having specific aims means that you don't feel guilt or diappointment for what is not accomplished. obviously, i know this isn't a lifelong luxury. it's some bonus of having typhoid. the upside in not feeling myself for 2 months. really, the main reason i live without goals is because being sick has so often meant that i can't accomplish them. so it's like a protection measure. someday i will need to return to teaching, being responsible for things outside myself, etcl. and hopefully i can still maintain some of the freedom of the days without goals.

i would probably feel differently if i hadn’t been to new york before. but, somewhere in the last week, i have modified my paradigm. why define days according to terms that will always amount to failure and unhappiness? yeah, it sucks to be tired all the time, and i could be depressed about it. but it’s also amazing not to be tied to goals and responsibilities and to do lists. to be content with watching movies and reading books. the “blah, blah, blah” of typhoid could be, instead, love for simple days defined by friends and relaxation. and, when i have enough energy (which occurs increasingly more often) to hike to a waterfall that’s still not defrosted from the winter’s ice or walk around central park, i appreciate it even more. of course, eventually i came to my senses. now, thinking about it, i wonder what emotional state i was in to believe that life could be summed up by “blah, blah, blah.” the “love, love, love” refrain is much more fitting for the joy of little moments and monumental friendship.

amsterdam avenue and connaught place

on sunday diana and i went to a street fair on the upper west side. she mentioned that she wanted to find a new purse and to keep a lookout. as it began raining harder, a stall caught my eye. specifically, a red purse caught my eye. yeah, that’s not uncharacteristic. but the odd thing is that i HAD the purse. and the more peculiar thing, still, is that it came from india. i asked the woman in the booth where the purses originated. sure enough, delhi. this antecdote could impel a few conclusions. a) even the street fair stalls in new york illustrate the international orientation of, arguably, the most diverse city in the world. b) upper west side women are being ripped off because that purse surely did not cost $20 in india. c) i need to get into the import/ export business to beef up the old teaching salary.

frontiers


"what do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? each moment seems split in two;
melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land."
(CHE GUEVERRA, MOTORCYCLE DIARIES)

the second weekend in august was manufactured to be the last days of a chapter of my life. i prefer to call it coldplay weekend. a final pilgrimage to alpine valley, arguably the finest outdoor concert venue, to see the, arguably, finest band. the end of college, the beginning of student teaching in india, peace corps in ghana, teaching english in japan, volunteering in southern colorado and working at the mayo clinic. a goodbye, well, so long or something not so permanent, to much of my college family. since then i’ve allowed phone calls, emails, letters, et. al. to replace coffee chats and lunch dates. over time and place, old friends continue to encapsulate my emotions in words better than i can. the belly laughs that end in tears or gasps for air aren’t any different across continents. at times, these are the moments that sustain me. somehow, parts of me have immigrated with my friends.

coming to colorado to visit beth was the first time i’ve been in one of my sister-friends’ worlds. though i feel completely connected to her, seeing a world that i am not a part of jarred me to tears. meeting her new friends and hearing new stories, seeing her new places… somehow, i had become somewhat of a foreigner at home (beth and my relationship being the home to which i refer). yeah, call it selfishness or jealousy. but it was a lot more complex than that. one of the people i love most in the world has a rich life completely foreign to me. someone who has defined college, living abroad, the concept of home in general, has another life. of course this is obvious. we all move away when we move on, finding new loved ones to color our days, sharing new experiences, establishing new inside jokes, listening to new music. and no matter how hard we try, we are going to miss out on the beautiful everyday idiosyncrasies that we so often taken for granted of daily life. and, no matter how wonderful the present is, to me, that still fucking sucks.

maybe i am too attached and nostalgic for the past. too tied to loved ones that are faraway. but isn’t that what life is? loving to an extreme? i knew that this would be the hardest part of leaving college (though i graduated almost a year ago). trying to let go and simultaneously hold on to the love. i realized, crying to beth, in a moment that solidified that little had changed in our actual relationship, that maybe i never let go in the first place. and, despite my love for india, woodstock, etc., i don’t know how to. how do we have to mourn the past to move on? how do we hold all the things we carry that define us while being present? laura seems to be on the same page in this matter. this is from her blog (so is the che gueverra quote)…

“i asked my mom, so is this what it means to be an adult? that people spread out, grow physically (if not emotionally) distant, that you’re never fully caught up with the stories of home, that you are appalled at the growth of young children, that the familiar feels cozy and welcoming, but also strange? can i be excited about change, look forward to new things, but miss the old, the way things were, too? is that allowed in adulthood?” (LAURA)



driving to the airport, i would have preferred time to stop as we grew closer. denver international airport 10 miles… 7 miles (at least it’s more than half… 1 mile… listening to x & y, “fix you” almost incited tears (big surprise, at this point). “tears stream down your face when you lose something you cannot replace…” though i know we don’t lose people when we leave each others’ sight, we do depart to separate worlds, leaving a bit of ourselves behind and initiating the cross-world communication that so often overlooks the beauty of the everyday. this morning beth and i laid in bed and talked about the ease of failing to appreciate love that seems constant. taking relationships for granted because they seem unchangeable, unending. this, of course, makes me think of something in extremely loud and incredibly close.

“it was late and we were tired. we assumed there would be other nights. anna’s breathing started to slow, but i still wanted to talk. she rolled on her side. i said, i want to tell you something. she said, you can tell me tomorrow. i had never told her how much i loved her. she was my sister. we slept in the same bed. there was never a right time to say it. it was always unnecessary… i thought about waking her. but it was unnecessary. there would be other nights. and how can you say i love you to someone you love? i rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her. here is the point of everything i have been trying to tell you, oskar. it’s always necessary” (FOER, E.L.A.I.C., 314).

distance can make the heart grow fonder and all that. and sometimes it takes a few thousand miles to learn not to take things, even the most important ones, for granted. but, either way, it's hard when the things you love most are so distant.

nomadic tendencies

i have a habit of putting entirely too much time into posts. i only have 11 minutes, so this is some sort of test. like one of those math time tests, if you will. god, i hated the division ones.



in the past week and a half i have become addicted to many of my old vices-- caramel lattes, guacamole, red wine, barnes and noble, driving-too-much-depsite-the-gas-prices, staying up til 2 am doing nothing in particular, watching hours of grey's anatomy (recorded in my absence by the best mom ever, robyn topic-humm), expensive long distance phone calls and an inability to remain in the same place for too long (funded, continually, by ronald j. humm). today i leave dreary minnesota to visit beth in colorado and consequently on to new york where i intend to pretend i am a wealthy, big-sunglass-wearing upper west side sex and the city wannabe. i can't believe i just used the word "wannabe." if my links would work, i would link the lyrics to "the world at large."

i can be encapsulated by my drive on friday. led out of the way by a confusing detour, listening to music with the windows down despite the rain. at times, the unplanned route would have stressed me out to a neurotic extent and the rain would have gotten my goad times a million (i really do have some midwestern tendencies). but not that day. unforseen, but perfect.

goodbye blue monday (subtitled: manufacturing moments)

since i've been home, i have been obsessed (even more than usual) with creating these perfect moments. sitting on the deck at my cabin, watching a storm roll in, smoking a cigarette and finishing the catcher in the rye. listening to joni mitchell and cooking dinner with my mom. drinking huge cups of coffee and making long distance phone calls to people i love more than i understand. burning a cd to accompany me on a country drive to northfield.

the drive from shakopee to northfield is one of my favorites, especially when made alone. there is something about the windows down freedom to sing as loudly as possible while intermittently exclaiming to myself about the song on the radio or the idiocy of the person in front of me. the drive is broken up into four ten-minute chunks. a lazy curve approximately 35 minutes in is when the hill comes into view. today, the hill impelled me to start wildly clapping, saying "yea" to myself, over and over.


i don't know why this place still holds so much for me. i've orchestrated multiple goodbyes to st. olaf over the years. additionally, i've never believed in going to cemetaries. i don't think people's spirits would hang around their gravesites. but there is something about this cafe, this table, this town. though the most-loved regular cast of characters is nowhere to be found, the extras provide a certain security. the waiter at chapatis, the cars with wellstone bumper stickers, former professors. beyond all reason, i still glance at the door when i see a person enter, expecting someone who will nibble off of my monster truck brownie and take a sip of my now-cold caramel latte. despite my intense nostalgia for the past, it's been a long time since i have this fully unearthed this, seemingly, my favorite version of home.

since moving off of the hill, away from the tree-filled lane of ole ave., i have discussed monday innumerable times. tory told me the other day that she lived by a bunch of coffee shops, but "nothing compares to blue monday." it's increasingly evident (though no mystery or surprise) that this place (olaf in a larger sense) maintains a particular place in my history. somewhere i cannot wholly jettison. as i drove through campus and turned onto ole avenue toward monday, i had a feeling of being awake. maybe it's that the exhaustion of typhoid is starting to leave my body. or maybe it's something about this place, about who i am in this setting. i read breakfast of champions because of its subtitle. and the subtitle has come to illustrate something for me. in a way, of course, we knew the meaning without the specific context. a place of refuge from work, stress, school, etc. now, upon return after almost a year since graduation, it still holds the same exceptionality. and, whatever is to come, there is a karass of people who share this home, too.

"the motto of the robo-magic washing machine cleverly confused two separate ideas people had about monday. one idea was that women traditionally did their laundry on monday. monday was simply washday, and not an especially depressing day on that account. people who had horrible jobs during the week used to call monday ‘blue monday’ sometimes, though, because they hated to return to work after a day of rest. when fred t. barry made up the robo-magic motto as a young man, he pretended that monday was called ‘blue monday’ because doing the laundry disgusted and exhausted women. the robo-magic was going to cheer them up."

(KURT VONNEGUT, BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS OR GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY, 243)

like we said, ash. truly the "chateau in the know." and here's to jeff, who always played the big wu at closing time.

to move (subtitled: back to the land of $4 coffee)

each time a plane takes off i feel the need to hold hands with those around me. that’s what my parents and i used to do every time the plane left the ground.

one of my favorite things about transit is the lack of “shoulding.” shoulding is the life-ruining technique of making oneself feel you should be doing something other than what you are doing. it’s a soul-killer, kids. and transit time—planes, trains, autorickshaws, boats—erases the shoulds. whatever i do there seems like bonus time. and traveling from mussoorie to minnesota provides apporoximately 40 hours of “bonus time.” so i currently ponder future amsterdam and u.s. food possibilities while soaking up the incredibly perfect lyrics of brian’s mix—“to move.”

the delightful klm flight attendant just deposited a towelette in my hand, which i used to wipe off the delhi filth from the two cab breakdowns on the way to the airport. having a conversation with jugdish, the driver, about the symptoms and warning signs for running out of gas in the heat seemed a fitting goodbye to india. completely foreseeable and preventable, but it happens, nonetheless.


my woodstock goodbye seemed like the famed birthday week of days of yore. to explain, when i was a kid, my birthday became a week-long event of my parents manufacturing of special moments. after i went to the hospital on thursday and made the decision to leave, my students and friends started pouring on the loving goodness. group hugs, a poem, words of affirmation and love, love in the format of food (what better kind?) and other intangible moments of pure joy marked my last days at my newest home. all and all, it was a perfect last weekend to reaffirm love for a place that could have been overcome with the bleakness of sickness. this saturday was mela—state fair (measured according to food and little handicraft stands) + student performances divided by an international community (buzz word… well, kids dressed in their native? ethnic? (insert culturally respectful and appropriate phrase here) attire and performing dances and serving food from their countries). these are two of my favorite students, shubi and akshay, selling hot dogs. so that whole thing i said about food from the kids' countries... anyway... we spent the rest of the weekend around the campfire, sleeping out in our yard, playing in a hail storm and eating.

on monday, singing along to music in brian's apartment, drinking red wine and enjoying the perfect balance of silence and laughter, i became fully aware for the first time the extent to which i have a woodstock family. ethan and jamie recently read cat's cradle by kurt vonnegut. vonnegut introduces a religion called bokonism. central to the workings of the philosophy are the karass and the wampeter. the karass is a "team [of people] that do[es] god's will without ever discovering what they are doing" (1). humanity is organized into many such teams. one can try to discover "the limits of [one's] karass and the nature of the work god almighty has had it do ... but such investigations are bound to be incomplete" ( 2). the wampeter is the pivot of the karass, around which the souls of the members of the karass revolve. i like to ponder the wampters and karassi (would that be the plural form?) of which i have been a part. the idea that we are intricately bound to others, even strangers, is intoxicating. and the bonds shared around wampeters appear to be my raisons d'etre.